DAVID BERNSTEIN’S aspirations for the year ahead, a period which marks the 150th anniversary of the Football Association, trip off the tongue.

“I’d like us to qualify for the World Cup. We are the FA, the Football Association, so football is very important,” said the organisation’s chairman.

“I would love us to win the Under-21s in Israel. It’s such a nice tight competition with eight teams, all high quality.”

Had he added he hopes for a rather more straightforward 12 months than those which have just passed, it would have been understandable.

I’d like us to qualify for the World Cup. We are the FA, the Football Association, so football is very important

David Bernstein

Providing significant strides was St George’s Park, on budget and on time, the implementation of the Elite Player Performance Plan, and the strengthening of the FA’s relationships with UEFA and FIFA, whose president Sepp Blatter will describe them today as “the No1 in FIFA”. But they did not define 2012.

From Terrygate to Fabio Capello resigning, to the appointment of Roy Hodgson as his successor as England coach and back to Terrygate once again, the past year has been one in which Bernstein’s leadership has come under intense scrutiny.

He leaves his post in July, the FA’s own archaic rules preventing anyone aged 70 from holding office. But the general feeling will be that he will go with much more still to give, which hints at the job he has done running the game in England.

“It was certainly a difficult year in that sense,” said Bernstein. “But always with football, specific high-profile things do tend to get such a massive exposure that it does overshadow the vast amount of positive things that happen.”

Bernstein is at Park High School in Stanmore, not far from Wembley, as part of a visit from the Holocaust Educational Trust, telling pupils that as a practising Jew he thinks about the massacre of the innocent “every day of his life”.

He visited Auschwitz-Birkenau in the summer with members of the England team while at Euro 2012 and it is apt that one of the legacies of his tenure will be the implementation of an anti-discrimination plan, which will include tariffs to deal with any future incidents blighting the national game. It was the decision to strip John Terry of the armband following allegations he had racially abused Anton Ferdinand that triggered a chain of events that changed the face of the national team.

Capello resigned, claiming his authority had been undermined, Hodgson arrived and, ultimately, came the Chelsea defender’s decision to retire from international football as the FA pressed ahead with bringing charges against him after he had been cleared by the courts.

The maelstrom shaped everything. Bernstein does not expect Terry to reverse his decision and instead prefers to look at the positives to emerge from an unsightly saga.

“I am delighted that legacy-wise one of the most important things for me personally is the anti-discrimination work that we have been doing, getting this paper signed off by all in football, the Premier League, the LMA, the Football League, the National Game, the PFA,” he said.

“We wrote it, but this is the whole of football. That is wonderful. There is a lot of work to be done now, but we got it started and I hope it will in coming years be seen as a real landmark. With hindsight I am very comfortable [with the Terry case]. It was an absolute one-off situation.

“Everybody thought the court would deal with it much quicker than they did. We were wrong-footed somewhat when the case got put back to July. We were right to let the manager pick him for the Euros on a sub-judice basis and right with the captaincy.

“Terry is a very fine footballer, no one can argue with that, and he is a leader on the pitch, so he is a loss to football.”

Terry’s absence is something Hodgson must bear. Meanwhile, England are off the pace in their World Cup qualifying group. Despite their friendship, Bernstein suggests failure is not an option.

“Roy thinks his choice of players is widening and I know he’s quite encouraged,” said Bernstein, who added that as there were 18 English players in the Manchester United and Liverpool squads at the weekend, it proves the talent is out there.

Bernstein added: “People wanted an English manager and they got an English manager. But it is too early to tell at the moment about qualification. We have done OK, but make no mistake we have to qualify. We all know that. Roy knows that. It’s desperately important that we qualify for Brazil.’’